Even though there is a lot of bad in humanity, I think that we are mostly good, and that the good is stronger than the bad, and overcoming it more and more, at an accelerating pace.

So I have faith in people.

We must talk about the bad and how to overcome it, but not overstate how bad things are for we lucky ones who live in such good times, or take for granted how good things are.

Consider what a brutal nightmare World War II was and the Cold War and how much of humanity was engulfed by them. Then consider how recently it happened. People who lived through it still walk the earth.

As traumatized as our civilization must be waking up from that nightmare so recently, I think it's amazing that we are doing as well as we are.

And I also think we can do even better. I have a lot of hope and love for you.

"It’s always important, and always hard, to distinguish positive economics — how things work — from normative economics — how things should be."

Well, yeah. Those two sound about as different as science and morality.

"Indeed, on many of the macro issues I’ve written about it has been obvious that large numbers of economists can’t bring themselves to make that distinction; they dislike activist government on political grounds, and this leads them to make really bad arguments about why fiscal stimulus can’t work and monetary stimulus will be disastrous. I don’t, by the way, think that this effect is symmetric: although people like Robert Lucas were quick to accuse people like Christy Romer of fabricating macro arguments to support a big-government agenda, this didn’t actually happen."

Okay wutdafuq did I just read?

"But I come now to talk not about macro but about money — specifically, about Bitcoin and all that.

So far almost all of the Bitcoin discussion has been positive economics — can this actually work? And I have to say that I’m still deeply unconvinced."

To be successful, money must be both a medium of exchange and a reasonably stable store of value. And it remains completely unclear why BitCoin should be a stable store of value. Brad DeLong puts it clearly:

Underpinning the value of gold is that if all else fails you can use it to make pretty things. Underpinning the value of the dollar is a combination of (a) the fact that you can use them to pay your taxes to the U.S. government, and (b) that the Federal Reserve is a potential dollar sink and has promised to buy them back and extinguish them if their real value starts to sink at (much) more than 2%/year (yes, I know)."

Dude, what a jackass. When he said "Bitcoin and all that" I already got the impression that he just dashed this off real quick and that he's not even really trying at this column...

And now he's just copy-pasting someone else's words in place of coming up with any thoughts of his own about it.

Okay then– Brad– a couple qualifications:

1)"Underpinning the value of gold is that... you can use it to make pretty things."

Correction: You can do a lot more with gold than make pretty things, like e.g. making "corrosion-free electrical connectors in computers and other electrical devices."

Just to make cellphones, companies use $500 million worth of gold each year.

goldbugs and crypto people both, your glorious destinies as merchant princes of the universe are intertwined!

(a)"the fact that you can use them to pay your taxes to the U.S. government"

Correction: you have to use them to pay your taxes to the U.S. governments, and you have to accept them in repayment of any debts.

It says it right on the notes.

So that's already one indication that digital currency is more real or has the potential to be more real than the U.S. dollar...

No one has to force me to use digital currency for it to be valuable.

(b)"the Federal Reserve is a potential dollar sink and has promised to buy them back and extinguish them if their real value starts to sink at (much) more than 2%/year"

Seriously this time:

wutdafuq did I just read?

Okay...

Correction #1: Here is the Federal Reserve's own numbers on the real value of the dollar over an American worker's life time:

Some smartass in ancient times was the first to have the bright idea to shave some of the metal off the edges of his coins...

And then spend them as if they were worth their denominated value...

Even though he had devalued them because they now had less actual metal in them and were consequently worth less...

And then save up all the metal shavings and melt them together into an ingot worth exactly the amount of value he had stolen from his society that way. Then sell it.

That's why many coin edges are reeded.

Well that graph above is the exact shape of the jagged edge of the U.S. Dollar as the Federal Reserve shaved off all that purchasing power little by little and stole it.

Shaved off a little bit of you every year, cut you without letting you feel it, and then slowly drained some of your life from you.
Correction #2: It is absolutely unreal that anyone could suggest the Federal Reserve is a potential dollar sink.

Here's the Federal Reserve's own graph of the amount of dollars it has created:

So I'm not a mathematician or finance whiz, but uh, looks like that sink is clogged!

Now the faucet's looking pretty wide open...

Placing a ceiling on the value of gold is mining technology, and the prospect that if its price gets out of whack for long on the upside a great deal more of it will be created. Placing a ceiling on the value of the dollar is the Federal Reserve’s role as actual dollar source, and its commitment not to allow deflation to happen.

Placing a ceiling on the value of bitcoins is computer technology and the form of the hash function… until the limit of 21 million bitcoins is reached. Placing a floor on the value of bitcoins is… what, exactly?

Paul, you answered your own question before asking it. An inherent characteristic of Bitcoin is a hard limit to the total supply of bitcoin.

Limiting the supply of bitcoin, unlike the unlimited expansion of the U.S. dollar supply, creates reliable scarcity and preserves bitcoin's value.

The floor on the value of bitcoin is the ceiling on its supply. But there is no floor on the value of the U.S. dollar because there is no ceiling on its supply. So the only people in the world who are allowed to create it, can keep making more of it until it's worthless.

And Krugman is seriously arguing that USD is a better money system than BTC because money has to be a stable store of value??

Here it is again...

Ladies and Gentleman,

Your stable store of value in USD:

And why?

Because, as Brad DeLong says, we have to just trust the Federal Reserve not to do this:

Whoops.

Well we don't have to trust Bitcoin not to screw us that way.

It's not subject to theft in the hands of institutional central controllers like USD.

"I have had and am continuing to have a dialogue with smart technologists who are very high on BitCoin — but when I try to get them to explain to me why BitCoin is a reliable store of value, they always seem to come back with explanations about how it’s a terrific medium of exchange. Even if I buy this (which I don’t, entirely), it doesn’t solve my problem. And I haven’t been able to get my correspondents to recognize that these are different questions."

Well they're not entirely different questions, Paul. The ability to exchange the value you create for other values you want or need is in itself very valuable.

In a highly productive, hyper-specialized economy like ours it is crucially valuable.

But anyways it is just amazing to read supporters of the Federal Reserve System criticizing Bitcoin on the basis that it isn't a reliable store of value.

When you can look at a graph and see the value of the U.S. Dollar evaporate and collect in the finance sector's pockets.

"But as I said, this is a positive discussion. What about the normative economics? Well, you should read Charlie Stross:

BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions.'

Go read the whole thing."

No, I am not going to do that, Paul.

Not after that Brad DeLong excerpt.

There's an old saying in Tennessee— I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee— that says: "Fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me— you can't get fooled again."

But as for this part:

"BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks"

That's right, bitch.

Also:

"The automobile looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage buggy whip manufacturers." -Stross, 1917

Stross doesn’t like that agenda, and neither do I; but I am trying not to let that tilt my positive analysis of BitCoin one way or the other. One suspects, however, that many BitCoin enthusiasts are, in fact, enthusiastic because, as Stross says, 'it pushes the same buttons as their gold fetish.'

Wow. Stross said that? Really?

Sounds like someone's got a Stross fetish.

What buttons would those be, Paul?

The reliable store of value button?

That button you've been ridiculously trying to press this whole column with your thieving Federal Reserve system that actually admits that it's been stealing value from the people who use its money for a century?

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

If you're going after some hard gains in muscle mass in 2018, lifting smart and hard is the first step, but the second, indispensable step is getting enough calories in for your body to start laying down mass.

From my own experimentation over the last year, I highly advocate cooking and blending high calorie meals with plenty of protein in them. Blending opens up all those calories and nutrients to instant absorption.

It makes everything you're taking in readily available to your body without the work of digestion, and it is easier on your digestive tract, which will be important given how much you will have to eat to gain.

Pay attention to how you're feeling, but don't worry too much about putting on some fat as well as muscle when you're trying to gain. If you're worried, lift harder. We're going to cut and get lean in late Spring.

Sunday, December 24, 2017

For many centuries now it has carried the connotation of anointment, which is to rub with fragrant oil.

An ancient practice most likely enjoyed for its sensual benefits to both skin and nose before it took on a ceremonial character as a means to impart the anointed with divine energy to accomplish a divine purpose.

So Jesus Christ literally means:

God Will Save Us By Rubbing Us With Scented Oil

Which makes sense if you think about it.

What is oil?

Like water it is essential to life.

In fact the cell membrane, the wall that separated the first living cells from the ocean water around them, creating a room for them to make their own magnificent kind of order, was and still is made of oil.

Like water oil can flow. But more smoothly. Noiselessly. Without crashing or splashing. It slides with the subtle perfection of a snake soundlessly gliding over the ground.

And unlike water oil can catch fire and burn. When oil burns it releases the energy from the literal sunlight that it subtly carries in the fine pleats of its chemical bonds.

To be anointed with oil is to be covered and separated off from the rest of the world, to become a room to manifest a particular, finely constituted, individual human spirit.

We have discovered in the West, owing a great debt to Christianity for our discovery, that this individuation of finely constituted human souls is the salvation of our kind.

"The Kingdom of Heaven Is Within You."

Oil also spoke to ancient people of the fat of animal sacrifices, one of the most ancient of dreams which revealed to our fortunate and wise ancestors that they could do better in life by giving up the animal to the sky.

That is by transcending the limitations of the short-sighted natures they owed to their origins in the animal kingdom.

And taking a wider view of the world, imagining what's beyond the horizon, and peering deep into the future— and reckoning with it in advance.

Rubbing on oil is the dream of becoming human and civilized.

The oil of this Christian ceremony is also fragrant, which makes the one who receives it like a flower, or perhaps reminds them that they are like a flower.

That they grow from a seed. That they blossom. That they whither and return to the ground. This is our Great Tragedy, and our Great Longing to Transcend.

Monday, December 18, 2017

They are the common-place, brief, and subtle dismissals, slights, and insults that constitute the casual degradation of socially marginalized groups.

Micro-aggressions are a 21st-century reenactment on a smaller scale of older, more severe forms of oppression and terrorism faced by minority groups.

But while they are subtle...

They are every bit as damaging in their effects on socially marginalized people.

We will not wait for social justice to just happen while we are vulnerable.

We will be prepared at all times to micro-defend ourselves against micro-aggressions, and this summary of micro-sparring principles serves as the first-of-its-kind guide to self-defense against micro-aggressions.

You could think of it as a real version of the Defense Against The Dark Arts class in the Harry Potter series’ Hogwarts School of Magic, except the very name of that class could be perceived as a micro-aggression.

And perceptions are reality. If an oppressed minority says they feel like they are being micro-aggressed, then they were!

But because the established norms of the privileged white male capitalist ableist cisgender heteronormative non otherwise inclusive patriarchy already dismiss and don’t take a marginalized person’s feelings into account, we must learn micro-defenses against micro-aggressions.

Like if a privileged person sitting next to you micro-hits you with a racist and ignorant micro-aggression, like [Trigger warning] “You’re the whitest black person I know.”

There is a way to respond to that to defend yourself against the oppressive degradation and negative energy that the oppressed person just received with every bit of force as a balled fist, and probably more.

If you want to learn how to defend yourself against the ruling patriarchy’s main tool of oppression, this guide will teach you micro-self-defense tactics and best practices that will keep you from any micro-harm.

Intro

[Trigger warning]

Let’s look at micro-sparring in the context of physical defense from an act of physical aggression.

The primary objective of self-defense is to prevent or minimize injury to yourself.

So micro-aggressions cause “micro” or emotional or social damage to a person.

The question of micro-self-defense is how to minimize that damage.

First would be a healthy and insulated head space. Reading movement literature is important in achieving this.

Also going to slam poetry readings by enlightened and tolerant artists.

[Trigger warning, mild curse word in the following paragraph]

Now any self-defense philosophy worth a damn will emphasize running away or neutralizing the situation instead of escalating. Trying to avoid conflict as much as possible.

But often this is not possible.

And the micro-aggressor is engaging in prolonged institutional conflict with the systemically marginalized.

While micro-aggressions are subtle, they are in fact obvious. While they are brief, they are in fact perpetual. While they are common-place, they are in fact unacceptable!

The Non-Sequitur

[Trigger warning]

One of the most powerful weapons to short circuit the brain of a micro-aggressor is the non-sequitur.

Something that makes absolutely no sense as a response to a micro-aggression (which itself makes absolutely no sense).

Which, in a way, that makes the most sense of all, micro-mirroring back a micro-aggressor’s micro-nonsense to them with a micro-rational non-sequitur.

So for example, say a white, privileged person comes up to you and says something ignorant and micro-aggressive like, [Trigger warning] "So you speak Asian right?”

One way to respond in micro-self-defense using the non-sequitur method would be to just slowly move closer to them, slowly wrap your arms around them, and start just [Trigger warning] kissing them.

Your micro-aggressor will be so confused and so uncomfortable because of that.

The discomfort will Pavlovianly micro-condition them to never say something so micro-horrifically ignorant again.

Now the key is to really commit to your response: when they try to slip out of your embrace, squeeze your arms around them even tighter and just start sloppily kissing them all over their face.

Then start [Trigger warning] yelling out loudly, and the key here is to be really loud and make a scene to embarrass them:

Start [Trigger warning] yelling out in a stereotypical Asian accent from like a 1950s movie, "ME LOVE YOU LONG TIME! ME LOVE YOU A LONG TIME, BIG GUY!”

Now you may have thought to yourself as you were reading that, that what I just suggested was actually [Trigger warning] a sexual assault, a not very micro-aggressive response to your micro-aggressor’s micro-aggression.

And you would be right.

Yeah, that would be responding to a micro aggression with some real aggression.

But I was just giving you an example of the [Trigger warning] nuclear option.

That's for repeat offenders only.

And it's time we start taking micro-aggressions seriously.

So do keep that one in your back pocket, but for only the most serious and egregious repeat micro-aggressors.

The first time it happens...

Say for instance some [Trigger warning] College Republican in a white shirt, red tie, and khaki pants comes up to you and says something offensive like [Trigger warning] "You know how to cook rice, right?"

Just employ a more subtle non-sequitur the first time they micro-aggress.

Say something like, "You know how to run to the moon and teach yourself how to cry in another language, smarty pants?”

They'll have no idea what to say to that. You will have thoroughly confused them and diffused their aggressive, racist bullying mind, replacing it with a docile, off-balance mind that doesn't know what to say next.

Their bully mind will have no way to orient itself in this confusing, unanticipated new world you've created where you neither accepted their bullying nor dignified it with an angry response, which either one would have satisfied the micro-bully.

Another excellent response to micro-aggression if the non sequitur doesn't sufficiently frighten and confused the micro-bully is micro-regression.

So an example would be the micro-aggressor asks his target: "Is that your real hair?"

And the micro-aggressee could say, "Yeah. I just got my hair cut. My friend cutted it for me. Do you think it looks really good? I'm tired. When can we go to the park? We goed yesterday and I slided down the slide Daddy!"

This is kind of a combination of the non sequitur and a micro-regression.

And as you can see, it's not very micro. In just six sentences the micro-aggressee age regresses almost two decades.

Sometimes you have to speak really loud and clear to get through the thick skulls of these micro-aggressors.

By micro-regressing back into the child mindset, you also effectively protect yourself from harmful information.

It simply doesn't exist to you. And remember protecting yourself from harm is the most important goal of micro-sparring.

This is a form of defense against harm for your own sake, and also a commentary on how the aggressor is normalizing the power structures of the Patriarchy and deemed you in need of some Patriarching.

Origins of Micro-Aggression

[Trigger warning]

A scientific study to determine if there is a genetic predisposition to micro-aggression is unnecessary.

It's obvious that the DNA of straight white males predisposes them towards this behavior. You can't blame the poor beasts.

But you don't have to allow yourself to come to micro-harm either.

While developing strategies for micro-sparring and micro-self defense, the ultimate aim of a truly radical and effective Social Justice movement would be to achieve unconditional global micro-apartheid:

"What good's all your uncle's work if the Empire takes it over? You know they've already started to nationalize commerce in the central systems? It won't be long before your uncle is just a tenant, slaving for the greater glory of the Empire."

Friday, December 15, 2017

They say airbrushed models and celebrities are unrealistic, but I think they are more realistic. It is the photograph that is unrealistic to begin with.

We don't usually notice someone's pores when we see them face to face.

When we are in the presence of someone their pores get airbrushed out by the animated spirit of their living existence, which can be unfathomably bright.

That draws our attention, so we don't even notice unimportant details. The camera doesn't see like we see though, and the photograph it produces cannot capture the experience of seeing someone face to face.

Instead the camera brutally captures everything that an eye without a human brain perceives, and conspicuously documents unimportant details. Airbrushing and photo shopping make the photo more like real experience.

Unless you think you'd be noticing this Victoria Secret model's pores if you were face to face with her.

"The politics of the lesser evil are very much in vogue right now—though not usually in terms as stark as what we just witnessed in Alabama—because neither major party has much in the way of a compelling vision to win support. Demonizing the other side and hardening tribal lines over issues of race, class, and social policy is, if not the only way to win in that environment, then certainly the easiest. This 'negative partisanship' has infected all parts of the political dynamic, and it's getting worse.

But winning elections isn't supposed to be the goal of politics. Creating policy is. And the politics of the lesser evil are not good for the creation of policy, because whoever wins gains power and therefore quickly becomes the greater evil."

"The left is getting nuttier, the hard right is getting scarier, and the entire enterprise of political control seems ever more outmoded. Over the last century, we’ve seen these gigantic government institutions with hegemonic power. All that remains is the struggle for who gets to control them and these elections are the public vehicle we’ve traditionally relied upon to render a decision."

"Friday was one of the most embarrassing days for the U.S. media in quite a long time. The humiliation orgy was kicked off by CNN, with MSNBC and CBS close behind, and countless pundits, commentators, and operatives joining the party throughout the day. By the end of the day, it was clear that several of the nation’s largest and most influential news outlets had spread an explosive but completely false news story to millions of people, while refusing to provide any explanation of how it happened..."
Philip Giraldi at The Ron Paul Institute:Why America’s Law Enforcement Empire Resembles Secret Police in a Dictatorship

"Secret police are characteristic of dictatorships, or so goes the conventional thinking on the subject. Police in democracies operate for the most part transparently and within a set of rules and guidelines that limits their ability to gratuitously punish citizens who have done nothing wrong. If a policeman operating under rule-of-law steps out of line, he can be held accountable. That is also conventional thinking.

But what happens when an ostensibly 'democratic' police force becomes corrupted and starts doing things that are outside its zone of responsibility, and does so to benefit a political relationship that will in turn protect those who have broken the law under cover of carrying out their official duties?"